Brightsong Development: SingABrightSong's craft catalogue

[SingABrightSong]

Greetings, kerbonauts! I've accumulated a sufficient amount of designs that I believe it is prudent to put them all in one place. Henceforth, I present to you Brightsong Development, where I shall consolidate information on my current craft and also post future developments. Before I start, I would like to give a very special thanks to @Rune, whose SSTO and Surface Base designs were in large part the inspiration for my own craft. If I mention that something is designed to fit into a cargo bay, chances are it was made with his SSTO fleet as the first consideration. And without further delay...

Modular Mobility

The initial offering for the modular mobility section is the Kentipede, a rugged mobile base. I have personally driven it off the edge of the Dres canyon and ridden it out completely intact. No word on the Mohole yet; It seems that my launch vehicle can no longer survive physics initialization, interrupting plans to test it there. Nonetheless, should you be able to haul it to orbit, each module possesses provision for landing, with aerospike engines, parachutes, and a fuel reserve. Kentipede modules are built out of Mark3 cargo bays, so they will not fit into them for obvious reasons. KerbalX

Next up is the Katerpillar. While just as capable in terms of onboard facilities as the Kentipede, the Katerpillar is designed to fit into a Mk3 cargo bay, so it lacks the sheer ruggedness and the ability to self-deploy. It resembles earlier prototypes of the Kentipede, but boasts a much lower part count, as well as regular module length. so extant deployment solutions are much more feasible to use. The wheels were, of course, an issue, but I discovered that they still work even if attached at an angle. If you have an open-ended cargo bay, say, one with a ramp at the end, it can even drive itself out after decoupling. Quite satisfying to pull off. KerbalX

After designing a base to fit in a Mk3 bay, the obvious next step was to design one for Mk2. Thus was born the Krawler. No driving out for this one, I fear, but it is rocket-powered, due to the necessity of using landing gear instead of motorized wheels. Thus, if your Mk2 spaceplane has to deploy it before landing, it is theoretically possible to land under its own power on, say, Gilly, though it is recommended that you just flip the cargo bay in the SPH. It lacks the power, of course, of its older siblings, but is still capable of research and ISRU operations. KerbalX

And of course, the logical extreme of the preceding process is to make something that fits into a Mk1 cargo bay. Enter the Kreeper. There is not actually a Mk1 cargo bay in stock KSP, however, and the 1.25 Service Bay is too small and fragile to be much use in this scenario, so instead I used the Structural Fuselage as my design guide. There are very few 0.625m modules in stock KSP, therefore making an actual *base* was out of the question, but if you staff it with an Engineer kerbonaut it should be capable of gathering science indefinitely in any rocky environment, provided it doesn't explode on the way there. KerbalX

That concludes the initial offering for Modular Mobility, but I have several concepts I wish to explore. Modular seabases? Modular aircraft? I'd look into modular orbital bases but I think that's already kind of standard. Landers, however...

Miscellaneous

Inspired by the "experimental aerospike" from the comic book series Atomic Robo, from which it draws its name, the Tesladyne is a "light chemical SSTO", that, while not of much utility, has proven quite fun to fly. It's design is not, in fact, based off its inspiration, but was instead an attempt to see how tiny and tidy I could make a Mk2 SSTO. I deemed it a success after making it to orbit and back intact, but I am not a very good SSTO pilot so chances are the veterans around here can do better. Any similarity to designs by a certain dropship dealership is purely coincidental KerbalX

And that's it, for now, but I do expect that I shall continue to experiment, and at least some of those experiments will likely end up here. Brightsong Development: Did somebody order a bright idea?

[KOCOUR]

erm no pics?

 

[SingABrightSong]

35 minutes ago, KOCOUR said:

erm no pics?

 

There are images in the KerbalX pages, but I was running out of available effort and didn't bother embedding them in the forums. I'll make a note to go back and edit some images in.